Product Placement

With television still being very popular, commercial entertainment has transferred the concept of soap operas onto the Web. The first of this new species of "Cybersoaps" was "The Spot", a story about the ups and downs of an American commune. The Spot not only within short time attracted a large audience, but also pioneered in the field of online product placement. Besides Sony banners, the companies logo is also placed on nearly every electronic product appearing in the story. Appearing as a site for light entertainment, The Spots main goal is to make the name Sony and its product range well known within the target audience.

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On-line Advertising Revenues

Although Internet advertising only really started in 1994, revenues showed a steady and fast growth. In 1997 US$ 906.5 million were spent on on-line advertising. Compared with advertising revenue for the television industry in equivalent dollars for its third year, the Internet was slightly ahead, at US$ 907 million compared to television's US$ 834 million. 1998 on-line advertising grew by 112 percent to US$ 1.92 billion in revenues, and is on track to hit US$ 4 billion in 1999, which would put Internet advertising at about 2 percent of the U.S. ad market.

Table: Spending on On-Line Advertising by Category

(first quarter 1999)

Category

Percent

Consumer-related

27 %

Financial services

21 %

Computing

20 %

Retail/mail order

13 %

New media

8 %



Table: Types of On-Line Advertising

(first quarter 1999)

Type of Advertising

Percent

Banners

58 %

Sponsorships

29 %

Interstitials

6 %

E-mail

1 %

Others

6 %



Source: Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB).

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Commercial vs. Independent Content: Human and Financial Resources

Concerning their human and financial resources commercial media and independent content provider are an extremely unequal pair. While the 1998 revenues of the world's leading media conglomerates (AOL Time Warner, Disney, Bertelsmann, Viacom and the News Corporation) amounted to US$ 91,144,000,000 provider of independent content usually act on a non-profit basis and to a considerable extent depend on donations and contributions.

Also the human resources they have at their disposal quite differ. Viacom for example employs 112,000 people. Alternative media conversely are mostly run by a small group of activists, most of them volunteers. Moreover the majority of the commercial media giants has a multitude of subsidiaries (Bertelsmann for instance has operations in 53 countries), while independent content provider in some cases do not even have proper office spaces. Asked about their offices number of square meters Frank Guerrero from RTMark comments "We have no square meters at all, because we are only on the web. I guess if you add up all of our servers and computers we would take up about one or two square meters."

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The Privatization of Censorship

According to a still widely held conviction, the global data networks constitute the long desired arena for uncensorable expression. This much is true: Because of the Net it has become increasingly difficult to sustain cultural and legal standards. Geographical proximity and territorial boundaries prove to be less relevant, when it does not affect a document's availability if it is stored on your desktop or on a host some thousand kilometers away. There is no international agreement on non-prohibited contents, so human rights organizations and nazi groups alike can bypass restrictions. No single authority or organization can impose its rules and standards on all others. This is why the Net is public space, a political arena where free expression is possible.

This freedom is conditioned by the design of the Net. But the Net's design is not a given, as Lawrence Lessig reminds us. Originally the design of the Net allowed a relatively high degree of privacy and communication was not controlled directly. But now this design is changing and this invisible agora in electronic space is endangered. Governments - even elected ones - and corporations introduce new technologies that allow us to be identified, monitored and tracked, that identify and block content, and that can allow our behaviour to be efficiently controlled.

When the World Wide Web was introduced, soon small independent media and human rights organizations began to use this platform for drawing worldwide attention to their publications and causes. It seemed to be the dawning of a new era with authoritarian regimes and multinational media corporations on the looser side. But now the Net's design is changing according to their needs.

"In every context that it can, the entertaining industry is trying to force the Internet into its own business model: the perfect control of content. From music (fighting MP3) and film (fighting the portability of DVD) to television, the industry is resisting the Net's original design. It was about the free flow of content; Hollywood wants perfect control instead" (Lawrence Lessig, Cyberspace Prosecutor, in: The Industry Standard, February 2000).

In the United States, Hollywood and AT&T, after its merger with MediaOne becoming the biggest US cable service provider, return to their prior positions in the Seventies: the control of content and infrastructure. If most people will access the Net via set up boxes connected to a TV set, it will become a kind of television, at least in the USA.

For small independent media it will become very hard to be heard, especially for those offering streaming video and music. Increasingly faster data transmissions just apply to download capacities; upload capacities are much - on the average about eight times - lower than download capacities. As an AT&T executive said in response to criticism: "We haven't built a 56 billion dollar cable network to have the blood sucked from our veins" (Lawrence Lessig, The Law in the Code: How the Net is Regulated, Lecture at the Institute for Human Sciences, Vienna, May 29th, 2000).

Consumers, not producers are preferred.

For corporations what remains to be done to control the Net is mainly to cope with the fact that because of the Net it has become increasingly difficult to sustain cultural and legal standards. On Nov 11, 1995 the German prosecuting attorney's office searched Compuserve Germany, the branch of an international Internet service provider, because the company was suspected of having offered access to child pornography. Consequently Compuserve blocked access to more than 200 newsgroups, all containing "sex" or "gay" in their names, for all its customers. But a few days later, an instruction for access to these blocked newsgroups via Compuserve came into circulation. On February 26, 1997, Felix Somm, the Chief Executive Officer of Compuserve Germany, was accused of complicity with the distribution of child and animal pornography in newsgroups. In May 1998 he received a prison sentence for two years. This sentence was suspended against a bail of about 51.000 Euro. The sentence was justified by pointing to the fact that Compuserve Germany offered access to its US parent company's servers hosting child pornography. Felix Somm was held responsible for access to forbidden content he could not know of. (For further information (in German) click here.)

Also in 1995, as an attack on US Vice-President Al Gore's intention to supply all public schools with Internet access, Republican Senator Charles Grassley warned of the lurking dangers for children on the Net. By referring to a Time magazine cover story by Philip Elmer-Dewitt from July 3 on pornography on the Net, he pointed out that 83,5% of all images online are pornographic. But Elmer-Dewitt was wrong. Obviously unaware of the difference between Bulletin Board Systems and the Net, he referred misleadingly to Marty Rimm's article Marketing Pornography on the Information Superhighway, published in the prestigious Georgetown Law Journal (vol. 83, June 1995, pp. 1849-1935). Rimm knew of this difference, of course, and stated it clearly. (For further information see Hoffman & Novak, The Cyberporn debate, http://ecommerce.vanderbilt.edu/cyberporn.debate.html and Franz Wegener, Cyberpornographie: Chronologie einer Hexenjagd; http://www.intro-online.de/c6.html)

Almost inevitably anxieties accompany the introduction of new technologies. In the 19th century it was said that traveling by train is bad for health. The debate produced by Time magazine's cover story and Senator Grassley's attack caused the impression that the Net has multiplied possible dangers for children. The global communication networks seem to be a inexhaustible source of mushrooming child pornography. Later would-be bomb recipes found on the Net added to already prevailing anxieties. As even in industrialized countries most people still have little or no first-hand experience with the Net, anxieties about child pornography or terrorist attacks can be stirred up and employed easily.

A similar and related debate is going on about the glorification of violence and erotic depictions in media. Pointing to a "toxic popular culture" shaped by media that "distort children's view of reality and even undermine their character growth", US right-wing social welfare organizations and think tanks call for strong media censorship. (See An Appeal to Hollywood, http://www.media-appeal.org/appeal.htm) Media, especially films and videos, are already censored and rated, so it is more censorship that is wanted.

The intentions for stimulating a debate on child pornography on the Net were manifold: Inter alia, it served the Republican Party to attack Democrat Al Gore's initiative to supply all public schools with Internet access; additionally, the big media corporations realized that because of the Net they might have to face new competitors and rushed to press for content regulation. Taking all these intentions together, we can say that this still ongoing debate constitutes the first and most well known attempt to impose content regulation on the Net. Consequently, at least in Western countries, governments and media corporations refer to child pornography for justifying legal requirement and the implementation of technologies for the surveillance and monitoring of individuals, the filtering, rating and blocking of content, and the prohibition of anonymous publishing on the Net.

In the name of "cleaning" the Net of child pornography, our basic rights are restricted. It is the insistence on unrestricted basic rights that needs to be justified, as it may seem.

Underlying the campaign to control the Net are several assumptions. Inter alia: The Net lacks control and needs to be made safe and secure; we may be exposed inadvertently to pornographic content; this content is harmful to children. Remarkably, racism seems to be not an issue.

The Net, especially the World Wide Web, is not like television (although it is to be feared this is what it might become like within the next years). Say, little Mary types "Barbie" in a search engine. Click here to see what happens. It is true, sometimes you might have the opportunity to see that pornography is just a few mouse clicks away, but it is not likely that you might be exposed to pornographic content unless you make deliberate mouse clicks.

In reaction to these anxieties, but in absence of data how children use the Internet, the US government released the Communications Decency Act (CDA) in 1996. In consequence the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) launched the famous Blue Ribbon Campaign and, among others, America Online and Microsoft Corporation supported a lawsuit of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) against this Act. On June 26, 1997, the US Supreme Court ruled the CDA as unconstitutional under the provisions of the First Amendment to the Constitution: The Communications Decency Act violated the basic right to free expression. After a summit with the US government industry leaders announced the using of existing rating and blocking systems and the development of new ones for "inappropriate" online resources.

So, after the failing of the CDA the US government has shifted its responsibility to the industry by inviting corporations to taking on governmental tasks. Bearing in the mind the CompuServe case and its possible consequences, the industry welcomed this decision and was quick to call this newly assumed responsibility "self-regulation". Strictly speaking, "self-regulation" as meant by the industry does not amount to the regulation of the behaviour of corporations by themselves. On the opposite, "self-regulation" is to be understood as the regulation of users' behaviour by the rating, filtering and blocking of Internet content considered being inappropriate. The Internet industry tries to show that technical solutions are more favourable than legislation und wants to be sure, not being held responsible and liable for illegal, offensive or harmful content. A new CompuServe case and a new Communications Decency Act shall be averted.

In the Memorandum Self-regulation of Internet Content released in late 1999 by the Bertelsmann Foundation it is recommended that the Internet industry joins forces with governmental institutions for enforcing codes of conduct and encouraging the implementation of filters and ratings systems. For further details on the Memorandum see the study by the Center for Democracy and Technology, An Analysis of the Bertelsmann Foundation Memorandum on Self-Regulation of Internet Content: Concerns from a User Empowerment Perspective.

In fact, the "self-regulation" of the Internet industry is privatized censorship performed by corporations and right-wing NGOs. Censorship has become a business. "Crucially, the lifting of restrictions on market competition hasn't advanced the cause of freedom of expression at all. On the contrary, the privatisation of cyberspace seems to be taking place alongside the introduction of heavy censorship." (Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron, The Californian Ideology)

While trying to convince us that its technical solutions are appropriate alternatives to government regulation, the Internet industry cannot dispense of governmental backing to enforce the proposed measures. This adds to and enforces the censorship measures already undertaken by governments. We are encouraged to use today's information and communication technologies, while the flow of information is restricted.

According to a report by Reporters Sans Frontières, quoted by Leonard R. Sussman in his essay Censor Dot Gov. The Internet and Press Freedom 2000, the following countries totally or largely control Internet access: Azerbaijan, Belarus, Burma, China, Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Kirghizstan, Libya, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Syria, Tajikistan, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam.

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Timeline 1900-1970 AD

1913 the wheel cipher gets re-invented as a strip

1917 William Frederick Friedman starts working as a cryptoanalyst at Riverbank Laboratories, which also works for the U.S. Government. Later he creates a school for military cryptoanalysis

- an AT&T-employee, Gilbert S. Vernam, invents a polyalphabetic cipher machine that works with random-keys

1918 the Germans start using the ADFGVX-system, that later gets later by the French Georges Painvin

- Arthur Scherbius patents a ciphering machine and tries to sell it to the German Military, but is rejected

1919 Hugo Alexander Koch invents a rotor cipher machine

1921 the Hebern Electric Code, a company producing electro-mechanical cipher machines, is founded

1923 Arthur Scherbius founds an enterprise to construct and finally sell his Enigma machine for the German Military

late 1920's/30's more and more it is criminals who use cryptology for their purposes (e.g. for smuggling). Elizabeth Smith Friedman deciphers the codes of rum-smugglers during prohibition regularly

1929 Lester S. Hill publishes his book Cryptography in an Algebraic Alphabet, which contains enciphered parts

1933-1945 the Germans make the Enigma machine its cryptographic main-tool, which is broken by the Poles Marian Rejewski, Gordon Welchman and Alan Turing's team at Bletchley Park in England in 1939

1937 the Japanese invent their so called Purple machine with the help of Herbert O. Yardley. The machine works with telephone stepping relays. It is broken by a team of William Frederick Friedman. As the Japanese were unable to break the US codes, they imagined their own codes to be unbreakable as well - and were not careful enough.

1930's the Sigaba machine is invented in the USA, either by W.F. Friedman or his colleague Frank Rowlett

- at the same time the British develop the Typex machine, similar to the German Enigma machine

1943 Colossus, a code breaking computer is put into action at Bletchley Park

1943-1980 the cryptographic Venona Project, done by the NSA, is taking place for a longer period than any other program of that type

1948 Shannon, one of the first modern cryptographers bringing mathematics into cryptography, publishes his book A Communications Theory of Secrecy Systems

1960's the Communications-Electronics Security Group (= CESG) is founded as a section of Government Communications Headquarters (= GCHQ)

late 1960's the IBM Watson Research Lab develops the Lucifer cipher

1969 James Ellis develops a system of separate public-keys and private-keys

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Timeline BC

~ 1900 BC: Egyptian writers use non-standard Hieroglyphs in inscriptions of a royal tomb; supposedly this is not the first but the first documented example of written cryptography

1500 an enciphered formula for the production of pottery is done in Mesopotamia

parts of the Hebrew writing of Jeremiah's words are written down in "atbash", which is nothing else than a reverse alphabet and one of the first famous methods of enciphering

4th century Aeneas Tacticus invents a form of beacons, by introducing a sort of water-clock

487 the Spartans introduce the so called "skytale" for sending short secret messages to and from the battle field

170 Polybius develops a system to convert letters into numerical characters, an invention called the Polybius Chequerboard.

50-60 Julius Caesar develops an enciphering method, later called the Caesar Cipher, shifting each letter of the alphabet an amount which is fixed before. Like atbash this is a monoalphabetic substitution.

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some essential definitions

some essential definitions in the field of cryptography are:
- cryptoanalysis
- cryptology
- ciphers

"Few false ideas have more firmly gripped the minds of so many intelligent men than the one that, if they just tried, they could invent a cipher that no one could break." (David Kahn)

codes
plaintext
ciphertext
to encipher/encode
to decipher/decode

The variants of encryption systems are endless.
For deciphering there exists always the same game of trial and error (first guessing the encryption method, then the code). A help to do so is pruning. Once, after a more or less long or short period a code/cipher breaks. Monoalphabetic ciphers can be broken easily and of course are no longer used today but for games.

for further information on codes and ciphers etc. see:
http://www.optonline.com/comptons/ceo/01004A.html
http://www.ridex.co.uk/cryptology/#_Toc439908851

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Anonymity

"Freedom of anonymous speech is an essential component of free speech."

Ian Goldberg/David Wagner, TAZ Servers and the Rewebber Network: Enabling Anonymous Publishing on the World Wide Web, in: First Monday 3,4, 1999

Someone wants to hide one's identity, to remain anonymous, if s/he fears to be holding accountable for something, say, a publication, that is considered to be prohibited. Anonymous publishing has a long tradition in European history. Writers of erotic literature or pamphlets, e. g., preferred to use pseudonyms or publish anonymously. During the Enlightenment books as d'Alembert's and Diderot's famous Encyclopaedia were printed and distributed secretly. Today Book Locker, a company selling electronic books, renews this tradition by allowing to post writings anonymously, to publish without the threat of being perishing for it. Sometimes anonymity is a precondition for reporting human rights abuses. For example, investigative journalists and regime critics may rely on anonymity. But we do not have to look that far; even you might need or use anonymity sometimes, say, when you are a woman wanting to avoid sexual harassment in chat rooms.

The original design of the Net, as far as it is preserved, offers a relatively high degree of privacy, because due to the client-server model all what is known about you is a report of the machine from which information was, respectively is requested. But this design of the Net interferes with the wish of corporations to know you, even to know more about you than you want them to know. What is euphemistically called customer relationship management systems means the collection, compilation and analysis of personal information about you by others.

In 1997 America Online member Timothy McVeigh, a Navy employee, made his homosexuality publicly known in a short autobiographical sketch. Another Navy employee reading this sketch informed the Navy. America Online revealed McVeigh's identity to the Navy, who discharged McVeigh. As the consequence of a court ruling on that case, Timothy McVeigh was allowed to return to the Navy. Sometimes anonymity really matters.

On the Net you still have several possibilities to remain anonymous. You may visit web sites via an anonymizing service. You might use a Web mail account (given the personal information given to the web mail service provider is not true) or you might use an anonymous remailing service which strips off the headers of your mail to make it impossible to identify the sender and forward your message. Used in combination with encryption tools and technologies like FreeHaven or Publius anonymous messaging services provide a powerful tool for countering censorship.

In Germany, in 1515, printers had to swear not to print or distribute any publication bypassing the councilmen. Today repressive regimes, such as China and Burma, and democratic governments, such as the France and Great Britain, alike impose or already have imposed laws against anonymous publishing on the Net.

Anonymity might be used for abuses, that is true, but "the burden of proof rests with those who would seek to limit it. (Rob Kling, Ya-ching Lee, Al Teich, Mark S. Frankel, Assessing Anonymous Communication on the Internet: Policy Deliberations, in: The Information Society, 1999).

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The Cassini Case

In 1997 NASA's Cassini mission to Saturn and its moons led to heated controversies, because it was fueled by plutonium, a substance that could cause serious environmental and health problems if it were released into the atmosphere.

Still no major U.S. news outlet in broadcasting or print reported in depth on the risks of the Cassini mission. Westinghouse-owned media like CBS and NBC (also partly owned by General Electric) for example had only reported that children were invited to sign a plaque inside Cassini. Not surprisingly Westinghouse and General Electric are two of the largest corporations with defense contracts and nuclear interests.

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Advertising

Advertising as referred to in most economic books is part of the marketing mix. Therefore advertising usually is closely associated with the aim of selling products and services. Still, developments like "branding" show a tendency towards the marketing of not only products and services, but of ideas and values. While advertising activities are also pursued by political parties, politicians and governmental as well as non-governmental organizations, most of the money flowing into the advertising industry comes from corporations. Although these clients come from such diverse fields, their intentions hardly differ. Attempting to influence the public, their main goal is to sell: Products, services, ideas, values and (political) ideology.

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biotechnology introduction



One of the most critical trends in the western culture what might be called the "fusion of flesh and machine". Increasingly, technological artifacts such as computers, rather than being used as tools by people, are functioning as parts of the human organism. On the other hand, human functionalities such as intelligence, emotion, adaptability or reproductivity are integrated into technological artifacts: the days when computers where only able to count apples and pears and their intelligence was not even matching an insect's are rapidly becoming history. Today, the boundaries between organisms and technology are losing their significance.

As new technologies are no longer mere instruments, or "extensions" of the organism, they acquire the capability of modifying the human organism - body and mind - from within according to certain pre-established principles. The history of the evolution of the human species is hastily being re-written as artificial beings begin to mock the categories of evolution and seem to work their way towards historical subjectivity. The German philosopher Günther Anders has extensively reflected on the changes of the human condition provoked by the development of modern technology speaks of an "antiquatedness of history" at a time when technology itself becomes a historical subject and men are becoming co-historical.

However, the softening of the biological definition of the human race is a theme which has accompanied western thinking ever since its origins. Beings half man-half animal crowd the tales of classical mythology and transcend the boundary between the human from below, while divine creatures, temporarily occupying humanoid bodies, relativise humanness form "above". What exactly "being human" meant and who "human beings" could be "defined" is a question with a long history. "Der Mensch ist das nicht festgestellte Thier" as Nietzsche commented.

Just as the boundaries between human and non-human are being crossed by technological development, so also the boundaries between the classical episteme are becoming permeable. Psychology is occupying itself with the emotions of machines, while physics and cybernetics is applied to the human mind and body. The "nicht festgestellte "character of humanness has meant that imagination has become just as relevant a factor in understanding humanness as science. Science fiction as a literary genre is no longer merely a depository of phantasies about a technisised world our of control. As the human monopoly on history seems to dissolve, the baroque narratives of science fiction have also become a resource for understanding history.

However, it is evident that the potentials of the new technologies gives rise not only to wild hopes and dreams and to bizarre stories; they also harbour some real ambiguities of a political and ethical nature. Not only does the merging of previously distinct realities - the human and the non-human worlds - unhinge theories and institutions based upon a clear distinction and separation of the two, it also is placing political practice on a different footing. Will artificial life have rights? Will artificial entities have political power? How will social relationships change?

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William Frederick Friedman

Friedman is considered the father of U.S.-American cryptoanalysis - he also was the one to start using this term.

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FEED

http://www.feed.com/

http://www.feed.com/
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ciphers

the word "cipher" comes from the Hebrew word "saphar", meaning "to number". Ciphers are mere substitutions. Each letter of the alphabet gets substituted; maybe by one letter or two or more.

an example:
PLAINTEXT a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z
CIPHERTEXT D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z A B C

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PGP

A cryptographic software application that was developed by Phil Zimmerman at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) is a cryptographic product family that enables people to securely exchange messages, and to secure files, disk volumes and network connections with both privacy and strong authentication.

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AT&T

AT&T Corporation provides voice, data and video communications services to large and small businesses, consumers and government entities. AT&T and its subsidiaries furnish domestic and international long distance, regional, local and wireless communications services, cable television and Internet communications services. AT&T also provides billing, directory and calling card services to support its communications business. AT&T's primary lines of business are business services, consumer services, broadband services and wireless services. In addition, AT&T's other lines of business include network management and professional services through AT&T Solutions and international operations and ventures. In June 2000, AT&T completed the acquisition of MediaOne Group. With the addition of MediaOne's 5 million cable subscribers, AT&T becomes the country's largest cable operator, with about 16 million customers on the systems it owns and operates, which pass nearly 28 million American homes. (source: Yahoo)

Slogan: "It's all within your reach"

Business indicators:

Sales 1999: $ 62.391 bn (+ 17,2 % from 1998)

Market capitalization: $ 104 bn

Employees: 107,800

Corporate website: http://www.att.com http://www.att.com/
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Gerard J. Holzmann and Bjoern Pehrson, The Early History of Data Networks

This book gives a fascinating glimpse of the many documented attempts throughout history to develop effective means for long distance communications. Large-scale communication networks are not a twentieth-century phenomenon. The oldest attempts date back to millennia before Christ and include ingenious uses of homing pigeons, mirrors, flags, torches, and beacons. The first true nationwide data networks, however, were being built almost two hundred years ago. At the turn of the 18th century, well before the electromagnetic telegraph was invented, many countries in Europe already had fully operational data communications systems with altogether close to one thousand network stations. The book shows how the so-called information revolution started in 1794, with the design and construction of the first true telegraph network in France, Chappe's fixed optical network.

http://www.it.kth.se/docs/early_net/

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Bandwidth

The bandwidth of a transmitted communications signal is a measure of the range of frequencies the signal occupies. The term is also used in reference to the frequency-response characteristics of a communications receiving system. All transmitted signals, whether analog or digital, have a certain bandwidth. The same is true of receiving systems.

Generally speaking, bandwidth is directly proportional to the amount of data transmitted or received per unit time. In a qualitative sense, bandwidth is proportional to the complexity of the data for a given level of system performance. For example, it takes more bandwidth to download a photograph in one second than it takes to download a page of text in one second. Large sound files, computer programs, and animated videos require still more bandwidth for acceptable system performance. Virtual reality (VR) and full-length three-dimensional audio/visual presentations require the most bandwidth of all.

In digital systems, bandwidth is data speed in bits per second (bps).

Source: Whatis.com

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Roman smoke telegraph network, 150 A.D.

The Roman smoke signals network consisted of towers within visible range of each other and had a total length of about 4500 kilometers. It was used for military signaling.

For a similar telegraph network in ancient Greece see Aeneas Tacitus' optical communication system.

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Memex Animation by Ian Adelman and Paul Kahn


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Fiber-optic cable networks

Fiber-optic cable networks may become the dominant method for high-speed Internet connections. Since the first fiber-optic cable was laid across the Atlantic in 1988, the demand for faster Internet connections is growing, fuelled by the growing network traffic, partly due to increasing implementation of corporate networks spanning the globe and to the use of graphics-heavy contents on the World Wide Web.

Fiber-optic cables have not much more in common with copper wires than the capacity to transmit information. As copper wires, they can be terrestrial and submarine connections, but they allow much higher transmission rates. Copper wires allow 32 telephone calls at the same time, but fiber-optic cable can carry 40,000 calls at the same time. A capacity, Alexander Graham Bell might have not envisioned when he transmitted the first words - "Mr. Watson, come here. I want you" - over a copper wire.

Copper wires will not come out of use in the foreseeable future because of technologies as DSL that speed up access drastically. But with the technology to transmit signals at more than one wavelength on fiber-optic cables, there bandwidth is increasing, too.

For technical information from the Encyclopaedia Britannica on telecommunication cables, click here. For technical information from the Encyclopaedia Britannica focusing on fiber-optic cables, click here.

An entertaining report of the laying of the FLAG submarine cable, up to now the longest fiber-optic cable on earth, including detailed background information on the cable industry and its history, Neal Stephenson has written for Wired: Mother Earth Mother Board. Click here for reading.

Susan Dumett has written a short history of undersea cables for Pretext magazine, Evolution of a Wired World. Click here for reading.

A timeline history of submarine cables and a detailed list of seemingly all submarine cables of the world, operational, planned and out of service, can be found on the Web site of the International Cable Protection Committee.

For maps of fiber-optic cable networks see the website of Kessler Marketing Intelligence, Inc.

http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/4/0...
http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/4/0...
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/ffgla...
http://www.pretext.com/mar98/features/story3....
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